According to Sandia biochemist Ryan Davis, a typical algae operation might grow 1 gram of biomass per liter (0.04 ounces per quarter gallon). Small-scale testing on these cyanobacteria shows they can produce 4 to 7 grams of sugar per liter of biomass (up to 0.25 ounces per quarter gallon)—an improvement in concentration of up to 700 percent. Therefore, growing cyanobacteria for sugars is more efficient than growing biomass.

Filtering sugar from water is a much simpler and therefore less expensive process than extracting lipids from large quantities of algae mass. Sugar is easy, compared to biomass, to convert into a wide variety of chemicals and fuels. Furthermore, cyanobacteria do not require additional fertilizer to make their sugars. These cost savings could make biofuels competitive with petroleum.

First,however, this group of cyanobacteria’s phenomenal sugar production needs to be better understood so it can be maximized.

In other words, we’re trying to deconstruct the magic sauce in this cyanobacteria consortium and learn what conditions are optimal for large-scale growth.

—Ryan Davis

HelioBioSys founders Rocco Mancinelli and David Smernoff say they chose to grow a community of three cyanobacteria rather than focus on a single organism (which is common in algae cultivation) because communal systems more closely resemble nature. Mancinelli and Smernoff say cyanobacteria in communities are stronger and more likely to survive changes in the environment, contamination and predation. Sandia is helping them test this idea.

The cyanobacteria have already proved successful in closed, controlled, sterile laboratories. Sandia researchers are now growing the cyanobacteria in large raceway systems. Although the raceways are indoors they are open to the air, so predation could prove a much bigger challenge.

Unlike true algae, cyanobacteria have the remarkable ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, which helps support their growth. This means cyanobacteria can literally pull their own fertilizer out of the air, eliminating the need for costly additional fertilizers.

Davis and his team are trying to understand whether each of the three cyanobacteria primarily performs a specific function for the consortium, such as fixing the nitrogen or producing most of the sugars. Even though the cyanobacteria require sunlight for growth, Davis thinks one of the cyanobacteria could be primarily responsible for acting like a sunscreen, protecting the group against light levels that get too high.

Sandia also is evaluating other attributes, such as micronutrient requirements or whether there are certain triggers for sugar production that could be controlled.

If the work at Sandia is successful, the next step is to test the cyanobacteria outdoors in larger ponds. After proving the technology outdoors, HelioBioSys hopes to license or sell the technology.

HelioBioSys was awarded $200,000 from the Small Business Vouchers Pilot program from the US Department of Energy to simultaneously optimize and scale-up upstream and downstream processes leading to the commercialization of the production of HelioSugar.

Mancinelli and Smernoff say that without the Small Business Vouchers program, getting cyanobacteria-based sugars to market would be unlikely.

Raising the funds for us to do the research that Sandia can do, with their equipment and facilities and expertise, would otherwise be impossible. So to have this program and let a small company like ours access those resources is invaluable.

—David Smernoff

As a result of the program, HelioBioSys has also partnered with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The laboratory has agreed to deploy their tangential flow filtration unit in Sandia’s test beds. The unit is essentially a box with a porous membrane that only allows molecules of a certain size to pass through it. This will allow Sandia to quickly separate and extract sugars from the marine water.

Additionally, the Berkeley laboratory is studying the viability of these sugars for conversion to biofuels. In addition to biofuels, sugars produced by marine cyanobacteria have the potential to be used as the source material for a long list of products that are currently derived from petroleum. These include plastics, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, nylon, adhesives, shoe polish, asphalt, roof shingles and more.